Digital-marketing pros lend hand to Internet startups

Bob Uhl knew firsthand how much food manufacturers spend getting their coupons in the hands of consumers and was kicking around his idea for doing it better on the Internet.

If he hadn't met family friend Bob Hobbs Jr. on the golf course and learned about Hobbs' new venture, Uhl would have wasted a lot of time and money taking his business idea down the wrong road.

"They bring tremendous credibility," said Uhl, a Phoenix resident and former president of meat processor Bar-S Foods in Phoenix. "I'm an old meat guy. I knew very little about the Internet except how to use it and search on Google."

Uhl's digital-coupon business is one of the first clients of Tallwave LLC, a Phoenix firm that provides business consulting, incubator services and digital marketing for ad agencies and Internet startups.

It is the brainchild of Jeffrey Pruitt, former president of Scottsdale-based iCrossing Inc., the digital-marketing agency acquired this summer by Hearst Corp. for $325 million.

Pruitt partnered with Hobbs, a friend since college and former executive vice president for Phoenix-based Naumann/Hobbs Material Handling, and other veterans from the digital marketing world to form the company in April. Mike Corak, formerly of Off Madison Ave marketing agency in Tempe, joined Tallwave in July as vice president of strategy.

Tallwave employees helped Uhl nail down the financial and marketing aspects of his business plan. They surveyed manufacturers and consumers to find their likes and dislikes about existing coupon websites. They analyzed competitors' sites and built Uhl's prototype site, which will be based in Phoenix.

Uhl won't disclose his company's name yet, but he envisions his site as a way for thousands of grocery-related manufacturers to quickly distribute their coupons and target them to specific users. With Tallwave's expertise in search-engine marketing, he hopes to drive traffic to give consumers a big, easy-to-find site amid the clutter of smaller coupon sites.

To start Tallwave, Pruitt recruited industry colleagues from top search-engine companies to be partners. They include Jen Dorre from Microsoft Corp.'s paid-search and advertising-sales team, Dan Boberg from Yahoo! Inc.'s professional-services unit, and Eric Facas, a former senior sales executive at Google Inc.

The three work out of Tallwave's California offices.

Jon Kaiden, a venture capitalist who invested in Tallwave and joined its board, said he was attracted to the company by the caliber of people Pruitt recruited and the emerging nature of the industry.

"This is only the third or fourth inning of the digital-marketing age, and there is so much more to go," said Kaiden, president of Sopris Capital in New York.